Blessed Sleep

January 14, 2014

     Last night Beau again woke me at 5:30 a.m., but only to let me know he wanted to climb into bed with me.  It was a small matter to let him out of the crate, pull out the throw on which he sleeps wherever he is and place it on my bed.  We slept together until 9:30 a.m.  It was wonderful.  He "spooned" himself into the curve of my abdomen, feeling the rising and falling of my breath, I feeling the breath pressing gently against his own curved form.  I awoke more refreshed than in weeks.

     The day was spent emptying out my clothes closets to "showcase" what had been our apartment and which I now intend to sell.  Fortunately, Danny, my stalwart friend when a mover is needed, could not set up his stand today on account of the rain which fell all day.  As a result, he was able to spend the whole day with me, helping me clear out the closets, and organize their contents into piles I would store  and piles I would take to my new house in Caunes-Minervois.

     "Showcasing" a house means giving it a patina of tasteful anonymity to the greatest extent possible.  Personal photographs, indications of religious or political affiliation must be effaced, so that the potential buyer can see himself living in a space the opinions of whose present owners he might believe abhorrent if he knew them.    For instance, it would probably be wise when showing the apartment not to mention that Bill was a Republican.  Or that he was a practicing Roman Catholic   Or that he died in the apartment.

     On the other hand, the number of available apartments for sale while interest rates remain low is so few that I could take the approach "I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions", as Lillian Hellman famously said before the House Un-American Activities Committee during the McCarthy era.  Of course, history subsequently revealed that Hellman had done exactly that, supporting Joseph Stalin by joining the Communist Party during 1938-1940, (during the Hitler-Stalin pact), later denying that she had ever done so.

     However, I want to sell the apartment sooner rather than later, so I will follow the rules and whitewash all the idiosyncratic decorating touches --the mug of Pope Benedict sandwiched between two "low ball" cocktail glasses, the latter a gift from the Archdiocese (which never asked if we were drinkers); the small plaster amorini hanging from the popcorn ceiling in the living room in homage to the life-sized winged cherubs that grace the bedroom from the Palazzo Sagredo at the Metropolitan Museum; the New Mexican retablo of Mary as the mater dolorosa, the seven swords protruding from her image representing her seven sorrows.

     Emptying the apartment is a sorrowful task, as anyone who has had to empty an apartment after someone has died there knows.  Going through an old oak box that belonged to Bill and which I had left untouched in his closet, I came across the garter I wore at my wedding, September 6, 1986.  To keep it or to let it go?  I still have ties that belong to Bill, the most beautiful ones in his closet.  Do I keep them or let them go?

     In "The Iron Lady", the film based on Margaret Thatcher's life that won Meryl Streep her third Oscar in 2011,  the aged former Prime Minister struggles to clean out her husband Denis' closet years after his death.  I hated the film, but the image of an aged, ailing, addled woman stayed with me.  What more proof do I need that it is time to put Bill's things to better use?

     There's a clothing box in the basement of our building which has been set up to benefit Housing Works, the AIDS charity.  I'm going to deposit the beautiful ties, the luxurious suspenders inside.  The garter, too.

      Bill and I used to "spoon" when we slept, as loving couples will.  Now a little dog "spoons" in his place.  I think Bill would approve, and prefer my launching a new life to my clinging to our past.  Nothing is as it was, but everything is new, too.